An HP dv2 Arrives: Or Are There Four of Them in Here?

Just a little mid-day funny here. As I alluded to in the CPU shootout earlier today, an HP dv2 is set to arrive here today. It actually arrived while I was on the road and Barb told me that she brought it upstairs to the home office. Lo and behold, this is what I saw when I walked into my office. Note: I put the MSI Wind netbook on top of the package for a size comparison. I only asked for one review unit, not four! ;)

Although the bigger-than-a-netbook dv2 is an HP device, AMD actually sent me this on loan. The idea is to take a look at their AMD Neo platform up close and personal. I will say that I was very impressed when I got some dv2 play-time at CES, but you do have to keep things in perspective here. The dv2 might be smallish like a netbook, but it retains a notebook-like starting price of $749 and I don’t expect to see much more than three-hours of battery life. On the flipside, the dv2 I saw in January can run rings around today’s traditional netbooks when it comes to the graphics department. Gaming or 1080p video should be no problem for this device.

As we say: different strokes for different folks, so I’ll be looking at the dv2 in depth and trying to shed light on who it’s for and what it can do better (or worse) than similar solutions out there. My initial gut expectation is that this device is more comparable to a reasonably powered ultra-portable notebook than a true netbook. Time will tell as we give it a thorough review. Now where did I put that utility knife so I can open this ginormous box up?